The Building Blocks

Are you reading blog post after blog post on online marketing? Watching webinars put out by every guru trying to figure out the ‘trick’ to online marketing?

You can stop right now. There are some shortcuts. There are some hacks. But the gurus aren’t sharing them until they’re already used up. You see, all those ‘secret tricks’ – they have a limited lifespan. And while they’re hot, they’re being used by people who spend their entire days, their livelihood, working at it. As a small business owner with more things to worry about – you’re not going to get access to the information in time, or be able to compete because unlike them – internet marketing is not your business.

Focus on the fundamentals. The building blocks.

Build a solid foundation with proven strategies that work and have lasted the test of time. Once you’re seeing results with that and understand the basics – then you can branch out into ‘new tactics’ if you want to experiment. You’ll also be in a better position to tell which ones might work from all the noise out there.

The good news is that there are only 3 fundamentals.

SEO.

Social Media.

Lead Nurturing.

Today I’m going to talk about the first.

SEO

SEO is about getting found in search engines. It stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search engines are a fantastic source of traffic to your site, because people find you when they’re actively researching or buying.

Getting ranked in Google is IMPORTANT. But it’s also slow.

If you’re currently getting 20 visitors a month to your site (and 10 of those are your friends and family), then expecting to get thousands in the next 30 days is not going to happen. Well it could. But then, you could win the lottery too. The odds are about the same.

It IS possible to do that in 6-9 months. If that sounds too long, don’t worry, search engines aren’t the only source of traffic to your site. We’ll show you how to get traffic faster, WHILE still pursuing the long-term advantage of being highly ranked in Google in an upcoming email (hint: that Twitter guide we already sent you – that’s a FANTASTIC way to speed things up)

Optimizing for SEO *IS* a long-term strategy. It probably won’t make much difference to your business in the first month. Or the second. Or maybe even the third. But things will start to roll, and then it becomes an unstoppable train.

Like rolling a snowball – the longer you roll it, the bigger it gets. Eventually, it’s no longer a snowball, but the base of snowman. It compounds over time.

You can also look at it like going to the gym. If you go to the gym once and expect to have that perfect beach-ready body, well, you’re probably going to be disappointed. But if you keep going to the gym, it’s pretty much inevitable. And if, once you’ve reached a physical state of perfection you stop going to the gym, you don’t automatically gain 20 lbs. You still enjoy the benefits of all the hard work you put in. Sure, slowly it will deteriorate, but you’ll still be looking good for quite some time. SEO is exactly the same.

So what do you have to do?

WRITE! (or create videos or other content).

You have to put something out there for people to find. A 5 page website doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to create content regularly – at least one blog post a week. While this might sound like just more work on top of an already busy schedule – it’s a great opportunity to not only increase leads to your business, but build trust with them before you even speak to them.

It’s an opportunity to tell the world what you do, how you do it, and what you think. It’s how you differentiate yourself in an increasingly competitive world. It’s an opportunity to reach people you could never have otherwise reached.

It’s a small business owner’s dream come true. Never before in the history of the world has it been possible for small businesses to compete for eyeballs with larger ones. They could always out-bid, out-budget, out-spend their way in every marketing channel. But the internet isn’t like that (as much). People find you.

The second requirement is doing some analysis on what to focus on. If you focus on things that noone is searching about in Google – well, it won’t be as effective as if you focus on things with lots of searches. On the flip side, if what you write about is highly competitive on Google – then your odds of ranking highly for it are very low. You’ll pretty much be invisible. It’s important to go after the right terms.

Third is optimizing your posts for search engines and social media sharing.

Spokal has all these tools built in, but you can do this using free keyword research tools, and a free plugin on your WordPress site called Yoast.

Write what you wish you could tell everybody. What to look for when evaluating service providers in your industry, or the type of product you sell.

If you’re short of ideas – open up your inbox. Find questions your customers and leads have asked you – take the answers you gave them, and write them up in a bigger blog post. Then send that customer a link to it – they’ll love it!)

Your website will become the hub of all your other marketing activities.